


death in an egg

by narcissae



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Gen, M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-08
Updated: 2017-06-08
Packaged: 2018-11-11 06:44:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11143008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/narcissae/pseuds/narcissae
Summary: in russian folklore, koschei the deathless is an immortal being who keeps his death hidden in an egg, and hoards treasures, and people, and things.kevin’s grief is a living breathing thing with teeth and wings. it is a stormy cloud of feathers and cruel eyes that follows him, draped over his shoulders like a shadowed dream.kevin’s grief is a terror in of itself, the absence of riko from their lives rendered in the wake of his violent demise somehow more terrifying and all-encompassing than his menacing presence.kevin needs an exorcism, needs purification, needs renee to bring a priest who will burn incense and incant blessings until he is purged of the miasma of his haunting, sulfur, and chalk, and coal.





	death in an egg

**Author's Note:**

> this is just some angstvomit about kevin dealing with riko's death, and the things that riko did to him, and the things tetsuji did to them both, and trying to reclaim some of the good bits of their friendship before it all went to shit.

death in an egg

kevin’s grief is a living breathing thing with teeth and wings. it is a stormy cloud of feathers and cruel eyes that follows him, draped over his shoulders like a shadowed dream.  
kevin’s grief is a terror in of itself, the absence of riko from their lives rendered in the wake of his violent demise somehow more terrifying and all-encompassing than his menacing presence.  
kevin needs an exorcism, needs purification, needs renee to bring a priest who will burn incense and incant blessings until he is purged of the miasma of his haunting, sulfur, and chalk, and coal. 

the dead lend themselves easily to being romanticized and loved. dead, riko cannot protest kevin’s love, cannot push it away, reject it, deny it. dead riko can only be that – dead. and so, kevin loves him. it is easy to talk about him now that he is gone, and say out loud what he had always known in his heart of hearts. 

“i would have forgiven him. i would have taken him back.” 

riko is dead, so he doesn’t have to face the hypocrisy, and the lie cannot take root in the shallow sands at the pit of his liquid spine made up of fragile shot glasses and regrets. 

but riko is dead, and kevin is alone with his fanged griefmonster, slamming shot after shot at an empty goal until his arms feel like lead. riko shot himself. 

it is the knowledge of that truth that his mangled roadkill of a bird whispers in his ear at night – that riko shot himself and kevin could have saved him. that it’s his fault. 

bee calls it survival guilt. kevin stops calling her. he doesn’t need a therapist, he needs a raven, but riko is dead and jean won’t talk to him, so he sits in his room, and drinks staring at the wall, where in the corner his grief has made a nest on top of the sealed boxes full of riko’s stuff, which tetsuji had not wanted, and which none of the ravens had known what to do with, and which kevin wasn’t ready to open. he lets his grief sit there. 

in the wake of his mother’s death, riko’s arms had been warm around him. riko, like him was a motherless, fatherless child. kevin wondered if either one of them had ever truly grown up from more than a vindictive little boy with a bone to pick with the whole world. he knows that they haven’t. he wishes riko hadn’t picked the bones in his hand. his handsome brother, lover, friend, soulmate, who would always, in kevin’s eye, merely be a child clinging to an exy raquet too big for him, wiping tears off his bruised cheeks, sallow face blossoming into a smile at the sight of his only friend in the world. he knows that he also, has never changed from an angry, griefsickchild, forever setting fire to his mother’s funeral pyre, forever throwing seashells at the gravestone, forever spreading her ashes into the sea, and now he has merely added another grave to walk to in his dreams, to lay flowers at, to bea this fists bloody at. he wonders if anyone will ever understand that they had been just children, and no one had wanted to help them, and riko’s hands were the safest place he’d ever known, and riko’s smile was the sun, if only they hadn’t grown into vampires. 

he is alone with his birdgrief. it would be too much to expect that any of the foxes would want to listen to his war stories, of which there are many. none of them care that riko had liked to doodle birds in the margins of his lecture notes, or that he took his tea with half a spoon of stevia, or that he preferred audio recordings to taking notes. he had also liked to break people and things, and leave the messes for others to deal with until he also became a mess to be dealt with and it seemed exceedingly clear only to kevin that it was a learned behaviour, that it hadn’t always been like this, and when they rejoiced over the ESPN announcement of the four day mourning period imposed on the Edgar Allan campus, he had been unable to hold it back, standing up abruptly, clenching his broken fist, choking on his anger, but all he could say was “you should have known him before”. 

he had broken kevin’s hand. and then he’d broken his heart. and then he’d taken it with him to his grave, and so now kevin day was a man without a heart, only a person-shaped hole, opening up starving, amd his gried perched on his shoulder, shrieking inquisitively at him. 

wymack wants him to forego all public appearances, and kevin tells him he doesn’t get a fucking say. something ugly and twisting pours out of that hole in between his ribs, floods his mouth and he spits it out – that he is the only fucking celebrity on the team. that he makes the team their fucking money, and that he can take whatever fucking public appearances he wishes, and that tetsuji moriyama is not going to have the last fucking word on riko’s memory, that he doesn’t get to disparage riko’s legacy, that there are fucking rules. 

he realizes only later that he has said “our memory”, “our legacy”, “our rules”, like he was already walled up behint bricks in the moriyama family tomb, face buried in riko’s neck, arms wrapped around him, breathing him in like they used to fall asleep when they were younger, and things were simpler. 

he’d been drunk. he’d apologized to wymack. but the uncomfortable silence between them had stretched into an admission of some grain of truth to his words, which is all he’d ever really needed, he wishes riko had taken the worst parts of him to his grave instead of the best ones. he wished riko hadn’t taken anything to his grave at all. he wishes riko was alive. 

but he’d gone publically anyway, so high on anti-anxiety meds, he couldn’t feel his face, and he’d talked in a quiet dispassionate voice, thinking that high he was almost like andrew sober, about the riko he’d known, and the birds in the notebooks, and how they’d been in love, and how riko had broken his hand, and how riko had shot himself, and how he missed him, missed him so much, every single day, had missed him for so long, they would have gone skiing together, eventually, one day, they would have forgiven each other. 

it’s ugly therapy, addressing a kind of grief to millions of strangers.  
raven fans clad in black extended their arms to him, to embrace it. to smooth back its messy feathers, straighten out its broken wings, polish its beak. 

ravens are never alone. kevin was not a raven anymore. returning to fox tower after the interview felt like being surrounded by enemies, and no one wanted to look him in the face, but he didn’t want to look at them either, shutting the door to his room behind him, digging through all the boxes until he could pull out riko’s old hoody, and bury his face in it, and fall asleep breathing him in. 

he wakes up to noise, blinks blearily in the darkness and thinks maybe he’s back in the nest, and the last three years have been an awful dream, and riko will call him any minute to morning practice. looking out the window all he can see is black. 

they are holding tealights and chanting the edgar allan fight song, and the place where his heart should be aches desperately, and soaks it in, and he is more alone than ever, and he misses riko, and when allison says “at least they aren’t trashing our cars this time,” he wants to bring a tire iron to her bubblegum pink monstrosity just out of spite, because he never bregrudged her grief, but she thinks she is allowed to pass judgment unto his. 

he doesn’t want to hate the foxes, but his chest is empty, and he is alone, and one loves him, and he expects all kinds of cruelty from everyone, and he hates them just a small bit, a shameful little bit at the bottom of every bottle where he hides, because they can never understand. every single day, year after year, him and riko in the same room, breathing the same air, hand in unloveable hand, a two-headed chimera. 

they had been the dream, on their untouchable pedestal, where riko had hoisted kevin up by the sheer force of his stubborness, willing to share it, if a little begrudgingly, but not to step down, certainly not to allow kevin to climb further up. 

he dreams of gunshots every night. wonders if riko was afraid. knows it would have always ended like this. lies to himself that it wouldn’t have. 

drinks in the morning to wake up. goes to practice alone, and practices until his body is on fire, and then goes home and drinks again to sleep, and smiles for the black clad mass of mourners who seem to perceive that they have lost him too, and when he testifies at tetsuji’s trial, his face is blank, and his grief is dead like his mother, and he is not vindicated in the slightest, but he still wants to take, and take, and take, like tetsuji took from him and riko, and if he can’t avenge himself, he wants to avenge the other one. 

he is going to kill us, he had said one day. he doesn’t remember the context anymore, only tetsuji’s anger, and the bruises, and riko’s cruel sharp face, twisted in anger and pain. 

one of us will make it out of here alive, riko had said, flippant and dismissive in his violent fury. 

he hadn’t known then – couldn’t have known then – that it was going to be jean. 

“your testimony has the chance to put my uncle in jail,” ichirou moriyama says. his voice is carefully controlled on the other end of the line. kevin is too hollowed out by is grief to be breathless with fear. he takes a swig of his bottle, and knows it is audible on the other side. 

“there is nothing you can offer me that will ever make me recant, or let him keep the things he took from us,” kevin says, also quiet, as though there is anyone in the room that can hear him, except the restless bird of sorrow. 

“riko didn’t kill himself,” ichirou says. “i shot him.” 

kevin closes his eyes and breathes, a panic attack rears its ugly head, and ichirou is still on the line when it has departed, leaving a pool of liquid vomit on the carpet. “did you look him in the face, when you did?” 

there is silence on the other end. finally, “i did.” 

“it doesn’t matter. i still won’t recant.” 

“you have loved my brother,” ichirou says, still careful. kevin shrugs, and realized on the phone he is unseen. takes another audible gulp of vodka. “you have to realize that my uncle will not go to jail, regardless of what you have or have not said. i’m afraid the only trial he will face is the court of public opinion.” 

kevin had known. 

“nathan wesninski came to the castle sometimes, on business. he showed riko how to use knives. i was there.” 

he can hear ichirou raising his eyebrow. at least, he likes to imagine that’s what the young lord is doing, when he says “oh?” even though it doesn’t sound the least bit surprised. the hole in his chest is aching. 

“i am going to kill him,” kevin says. he is tired. he is so, so tired, and so sad. he misses riko. he misses his mother. he wants the foxes to talk to him, and to understand. he wants wymnack to be proud of him. wants, wants, wants. 

“i understand.” ichirou says. in a world where moriyamas could be defeated, he would sound defeated, but it is not that kind of world, and he does not. “i wonder – “ he begins. 

kevin takes another drink. 

“i wonder, if you realize that what happened to riko was not my uncle’s fault, but rather his own doing.” 

in a world where moriyamas took orders, kevin would order him to stop. would say “do not,” in a terrifying voice, and this would be over, but he doesn’t. 

instead, he says what he has always wanted to say, to tetsuji, to the press, to wymack, to the foxes, petulant and stubborn, and hollowed out by his grief, and ready to just fucking forgive already, because carrying all of that is too exhausting, and he has just wanted him and riko to smile together on that olympic podium one last time, “we were children.” 

on the other end of the line, ichirou moriyama heaves a sigh. kevin wonders if he is grieving too. 

the bleeding package on the table doesn’t even register as alarming, in the early morning light. all kinds of things are bleeding in kevin’s life. by the ring, he recognizes tetsuji moriyama’s severed left hand. he is not vindicated. riko is not avenged. the hole in his heart is shedding baby teeth and growing proper fangs, still starving. the grief still leaved in the mess of riko’s things in his room. it isn’t enough. it will never be enough. 

his mother’s hair is impossibly red as she dances on top of a funeral pyre stacked high with exy sticks. riko is pale as the snow on ski resort mountain tops, blue with ice. 

kevin wipes the stale blood on the hoody, and buries his face in it again. 

“you know it doesn’t smell like him anymore, right?” wymack says quietly from the doorway. his hands are raised, as though kevin has turned a gun on him, rather than his tear streaked face. he kicks the bottles of Russian Standard aside, and sits on the edge of the unchanged bedsheets. 

in the midst of his grief kevin is happy that he has a father like this, ready to come in, forgiveness in hand. 

he lets himself lay against his side, bury his face in his neck. 

“i loved him very much,” he says, voice messed up with drink and sobs. “and it wasn’t enough.” 

“there wasn’t much you could have done.” his father says kindly. “you were just a kid.” 

“he was too.” kevin hates his voice coming out as a whine. hates being a child. loves being a son, this man’s son. 

“yeah.” wymack agrees, and doesn’t sound begrudging about it. “you were just kids.”  
kevin starts to cry in earnest. the thing with feathers spreads its wings, shakes off a little bit, and leaves his room, and in the egg it’s laid on the messy nest of riko’s old notebooks, hatches kevin’s new heart.


End file.
